Dr. Monique Moultrie is co-Principal Investigator for The Garden Initiative for Black Women’s Religious Activism, which was recently awarded a $50,000 grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. The Carpenter Foundation’s support moves forward the momentum of The Garden Initiative by expanding The Garden Initiative’s gathering of oral histories, focusing on Black women’s religious diversity; and archival content that reflects Black women’s religious activism within social justice movements. With this new grant support, Dr. Moultrie has hired a part-time postdoctoral research associate and four student assistants. She is excited to have resources to work with some of GSU’s most talented students on the project.
Dr. Moultrie’s research centers on religion, race, gender, and sexuality. Her research projects utilize qualitative research with Black women to investigate research gaps on Black women religious leaders and Black female sexual agency. In her most recent book Hidden Histories: Faith and Black Lesbian Leadership published by Duke University Press in March 2023, she conducted oral histories with Black lesbian religious leaders highlighting the leaders’ authenticity, social justice awareness, spirituality, and collaborative leadership as defining traits of a womanist ethical leader. She was motivated to pursue this work due to her interest in documenting Black women’s agency, leadership, and effectiveness in creating social change.
One of the true highlights of her research has been amplifying the transformative lives of her interviewees. Hidden Histories and her current research on reproductive justice and faith all promote social justice activism as ways to create a more just society. The promise of conducting interviews with amazing research subjects is the ability to glean from their examples. One of the challenges of conducting qualitative research is that it is often non-generalizable and not always easily duplicated so my moral exemplars are shining possibilities but not guaranteed examples of how to change the world. For example, in Hidden Histories she was stunned that there was no ideal religious community that got things right, and no one type of commitment to social justice that allowed for the broadest range of social change. She values talking with living women as research subjects, and her next research projects continue to showcase Black women’s moral agency.
In addition to the project on reproductive justice and faith, she is planning an international conference for The Garden Initiative in the Fall of 2024 that will bring together social justice activists, religious leaders, and scholars to discuss religion and social change.
To read more about her book Hidden Histories, check out this great interview on the GSU College of Arts and Sciences News Hub, or this interview with Essence.